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    The Death and Life of Bobby Z: A Novel
    Unavailable
    The Death and Life of Bobby Z: A Novel
    Unavailable
    The Death and Life of Bobby Z: A Novel
    Audiobook (abridged)2 hours

    The Death and Life of Bobby Z: A Novel

    Written by Don Winslow

    Narrated by Darrell Lawson

    4/5

    ()

    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this audiobook

    When Tim Kearney draws a license plate across the throat of a Hell's Angel, he's pretty much a dead man. It's his third crime and, according to California law, that gives him "life without the possibility of parole."  Killing a Hell's Angel also makes him a dead man on any prison yard in California. That's when the DEA makes Kearney an offer: impersonate the late, legendary dope smuggler Bobby Z so that the agency can trade him to Don Huertero -- northern Mexico's drug kingpin -- for a captured DEA agent. Tim Kearney bears an uncanny resemblance to Bobby Z, and, with some training, he might be able to pass.

    Or not. But, really, what choice does he have?

    So, he's off to a compound in the middle of a desert that's been designed by Huertero's number-two man to look like the Arab fort in his favorite movie, Beau Jeste ("The Santa Fe thing had been done to death.") Kearney's surprised when he meets Bobby Z's old flame, Elizabeth, who was never mentioned in his training, and her son, who she claims belongs to him. It's a short vacation by the pool before Kearney's on the run from drug lords, bikers, Indians, and cops ... and the kid's along for the ride. Some of the pursuers want Bobby Z, and some want the considerably less legendary Tim K. Whether he pulls it off, whether he can keep the kid and the girl and his life, makes for a hilarious, fast-paced, and truly touching audio.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherPenguin Random House Audio
    Release dateFeb 6, 2007
    ISBN9780739354322
    Unavailable
    The Death and Life of Bobby Z: A Novel
    Author

    Don Winslow

    Don Winslow is the author of twenty-five acclaimed, award-winning international bestsellers, including seven New York Times bestsellers (Savages, The Kings of Cool, The Cartel, The Force, The Border, City on Fire and City of Dreams). Savages was made into a feature film by three-time Oscar-winning writer-director Oliver Stone from a screenplay by Shane Salerno, Winslow and Stone. Winslow's epic Cartel trilogy has been adapted for TV and will appear as a weekly series on FX. Additional Winslow books are currently in development at Paramount (The Winter of Frankie Machine), Netflix (Boone Daniels), Warner Brothers (Satori), Sony (City on Fire, City of Dreams, City in Ruins) and Working Title (“Crime 101”) and he has recently written a series of acclaimed and award winning short stories for Audible narrated by four-time Oscar nominee Ed Harris. A former investigator, anti-terrorist trainer and trial consultant, Winslow has announced that City in Ruins will be his final novel.

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    Reviews for The Death and Life of Bobby Z

    4/5

    135 ratings8 reviews

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    • 4/5
      Tim Kearney, ex-marine and career small-time criminal is sprung from a life sentence by the DEA to impersonate Bobby Z, a ghostly major drug dealer. That's the simple part. There's much more intrigue, with deals and counter deals, with much back-stabbing and murder, and a kid - The son the real Bobby Z never knew he had. So Tim is trying to stay alive and keep Bobby Z's son - his son - safe while they're being tracked by the DEA, bikers and Mexican Cartel killers. A well-paced California thriller.
    • 4/5
      I wish they had 3.5-star reviews.

      This is high-octane easy-reading completely implausible crime fiction that goes down easy. It's almost perfect for what it is -- which is fundamentally lightweight but a lot of fun regardless.
    • 4/5
      Drug dealer fiction and action. Was pretty damn good. Doesn't try to be more than it is.
    • 4/5
      This book is just plain fun. It's got me scurrying for other books by Don Winslow. Again, all I can say is fun.
    • 4/5
      A page turner even if the ending did not really satisfied me
    • 4/5
      My third Don Winslow book, and I'm three-for-three for enjoyment! Another quick and exciting read! Tim Kearney gets a chance to get out of jail if he becomes the legend, Bobby Z. He agrees, and all hell breaks loose! Everyone is out to kill him, he fall in love, and he discovers "he" has a kid! Bikers, drug dealers, and the DEA will stop at nothing to kill him, and he'll stop at nothing to keep the woman and kid in his life! And the end? Well, it's fireworks man!
    • 5/5
      This one didn't grab me immediately but was well worth sticking with. It's funny and frantic and really good. Tim Kearney is a real looser. As he says he's great at breaking and entering. It's breaking, entering and EXITING that he hasn't perfected. He keeps getting caught. Then in prison he has to kill a Hell's Angel so now even his life in prison is in jeopardy. He's offered an out - just impersonate a drug dealer for a trade for a government agent. He takes the deal and the story takes off. It doesn't sound funny, I know, but… trust me.
    • 4/5
      One of those rare books whose laudatory cover blurbs actually bear some relation to the contents inside, The Death and Life of Bobby Z is the hair-raising, addictive and frequently funny story of ex-Marine, Gulf War vet, three time loser Tim Kearney attempting to make good on a deal from a crooked DEA agent to impersonate the deceased surfer-cum-pot smuggler par excellence named Bobby Z to escape a certain death behind prison walls following on from Kearney's neat assassination of a Hell's Angel/Aryan Brotherhood bruiser. The pitch-perfect dialogue shifts from California slacker to hard-nosed cattle rancher to pompous, self-styled hidalgo-hood with barely a bobble, and the rogues gallery is filled to bursting with off-the-reservation feds, movie-obsessed pedophiles, Eurotrash, bikers, cholos, and war vets, many of whom converge in a kind of perfect storm in the book's hellzapoppin' finale. Behind all the mayhem, buckets of black humor, jaw-dropping escapes, explicit sex and rampant profanity lurks a sweet, sentimental optimism and a message of hope and redemption that would not be out of place on the most flowery and ostentatiously religious greeting card, and it is to Winslow's credit that this comes across as part of an organic whole, not an afterthought bit of moralizing á la Scarface: The Shame of a Nation.